Lessons from the Co-Founder of Tadpole Tutoring: A Reflection

Written by Andrew Shenouda ‘21, Co-Founder of Tadpole Tutoring

The conscious mind is dictated by the complex (and often fickle) relationship between the limitations of memory and the captivations of desire. This is to say that the human experience is often grounded in subjectivity and, as a result, can be pandered to in a manner intended to achieve a certain desired effect. This principle, among other things, is what this article will venture to explore in greater detail. Readers, in this maiden issue of Entrepreneur Illustrated, I ask you to humor me as I reflect upon some of my humble experiences from running an online tutoring service, Tadpole Tutoring. Here’s to a decent read.

First and foremost, I suppose it makes sense to give a brief overview of our vision for Tadpole. Along with several other individuals, my team and I are working to synthesize a service marketplace that connects students and tutors from across the globe. Our goal is to provide an intuitive, user-friendly interface that allows individuals to set up online tutoring sessions with qualified tutors who have the skill and know-how to help out. Our organization not only enables parents to have hundreds of tutors of varying strengths at their disposal but also provides an opportunity for high school and college-aged students to earn money. It’s cool stuff, and we have been fortunate enough to obtain a considerable degree of success (something, for the record, that did not come on our first try). Perhaps most interestingly, we make it easy for tutors to payout funds from their dashboard to charities of their choice.

Much of our good fortune can be attributed to our adherence to one main principle: our commitment to creating a minimum lovable product as opposed to a minimum viable product. Oftentimes, when individuals endeavor to start up a business, they evaluate their ultimate vision, check out their competition and, in a rush of good-hearted enthusiasm, attempt to bring to life every feature, service, bell, and whistle in their first go—effectively holding functionality paramount at the expense of true quality. This is what is embodied by a minimum viable product. Consider a situation in which someone tries to create an iteration of a website that offers online cooking lessons. They work to include a scheduling system to reserve spots for classes, a chat system to enable communication between students and teachers, a review system to upvote and downvote different offerings, a social networking system to allow people to get to know each other, a recommendation system to get others to join the site, and… well, you get the gist. While a compelling argument can be made for the necessity of each of these features, more often than not they’ll be implemented at a substandard quality. An individual has a finite reserve of resources in the form of time and capital. When you spread yourself too thin, things such as reliability, usability, and design fall to the wayside.

This leads to my discussion of what a minimum lovable product is and how it entails to the different stages of launch. More properly, rather than attempting to obtain widespread functionality through developing a parade of different features, the MLP mindset encourages targeted work on a select few set of features—this results in the production of a website that, in its early stages, can do less. That said, the services it does provide are of supreme quality, ensuring that the user has a positive, dare I say lovable, experience. Upon culminating a base of committed users, only then is it appropriate to take the next step and issue a new iteration of the website with even more to love. Keeping in common with our initial example of a website for cooking lessons, an advocate of the MLP would stick to just developing the scheduling and chat system—holding customer satisfaction, as opposed to functionality, paramount.

Prior to concluding this article, I wish to discuss what it means to build a product of high quality. As per the implications of the introduction, it is critical to tailor the creation and placement of your product in a manner that is consistent with the nature of the human psyche. For the most part, very little of the string of experiences that define life are committed to memory. As such, a central part of creating a high-quality consumer experience is ensuring that your product and/or service is memorable—that it possesses the capacity to win the bitter bidding war between all of life’s distractions for real estate within an individual’s head. Additionally, it is essential that your organization push a product that is just as useful as it is memorable. It should, in some manner, address a primal need that is an integral concern of your target audience. When designing your MLP, know your market inside out, and create something that plays into the true identity of your customer base.

Much of these conclusions I present before you are lessons as old as time itself. Personally, however, I never understood the true magnitude of their applications until going through the process of creating a business. If you ever venture into the exhilarating world of business, I suggest you take these strategies and principles to heart. Truly consider who you are trying to sell to, be thoughtful about your growth strategy, and work with sincerity of purpose. Success will come.

Minimum Lovable Product

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